Dreaming of Ropefish
- Thread starter Cat Fish Mama
- Start date
Can anyone advise on feeding ropefish, specifically, quantity and frequency per fish? I don't have them yet but want to be super well informed and prepared. (Already covered tank setup, tankmates, need for 3 or more together.) The more specific the better. If you can tell me teaspoons or grams per size of fish, it might seem like crazy detail but I would feel safer. The guy at my LFS (who has been keeping fish for almost 20 years) said he's seen them die from bloat before over the course of a month and there is nothing you can do once their back end starts floating so do not overfeed them. Yikes!
I had livebearers before and I tended to overfeed in the hopes of giving the fry a fighting chance. I also upped the frequency of water changes to compensate. It worked for the guppies, but I don't want to take any chances with ropefish. The tank has sponge filters only, to prevent escape or fatal stuck-in-the-filter incidents. I can feed and clean as needed. Thanks for the help!
I had livebearers before and I tended to overfeed in the hopes of giving the fry a fighting chance. I also upped the frequency of water changes to compensate. It worked for the guppies, but I don't want to take any chances with ropefish. The tank has sponge filters only, to prevent escape or fatal stuck-in-the-filter incidents. I can feed and clean as needed. Thanks for the help!
While bloat can be a problem but atleast with ropefish and bichirs it can be treated through salt, clean water, and stopping the feeding. However the best way to prevent it is having a fasting day every other day to every 2 days. As far as food they like bloodworms, tilapia, earthworms, and pellets. On quantity it depends on the individual and will take some experimentation to figure out what they eat in 15 minutes or so. I admit I'm an overfeeder too and do it in my predator tank to make sure everybody gets some since there is 21 predator in there and some are shy but by feeding every other day even the biggest pigs are ok
Agreed.+1 best advise
It may take a bit to get them eating pellets. Mine took about 6 months to even register a pellet was food. Meaty foods like chopped tilapia, black worms, blood worms are best to start then you can try soaking pellets in the juice of thawed blood worms to get them eating pellets.
What they said. It will take trial and error as each fish is different. Be sure to cut the frozen fish etc fairly small so they can swallow it easily. I also would have to cut Massivore pellets because they were pretty big.
FWIW mine liked to eat for sure but never seemed to over-eat and never bloated. I did feed every other day. I would feed one day "live" (usually frozen), skip a day, feed pellets, skip a day, feed live, etc.
Mine switched over pretty quickly (within one month) to pellets with the bloodworm soaking technique. When I fed pellets I did not feed meaty food. So if they did not eat they were extra hungry next feeding.
It will take trial and error as each fish is different. Be sure to cut the frozen fish etc fairly small so they can swallow it easily. I also would have to cut Massivore pellets because they were pretty big. FWIW mine liked to eat for sure but never seemed to over-eat and never bloated. I did feed every other day. I would feed one day "live" (usually frozen), skip a day, feed pellets, skip a day, feed live, etc.
Mine switched over pretty quickly (within one month) to pellets with the bloodworm soaking technique. When I fed pellets I did not feed meaty food. So if they did not eat they were extra hungry next feeding.
What they said.
On the frozen fish if you run it through a food processor even the smallest ropefish can tear a chunk off
with my muscular dystrophy it takes 10 minutes to cut up a single fillet so the $10 food processor was a godsend
